


the blades rotate, there's just no landing pad

by spiekiel



Category: Teen Wolf (TV), The Losers (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Friends to Lovers, Hurt Derek, Hurt Stiles, M/M, Near Death Experiences, derek is spanish, losers au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-28
Updated: 2015-04-28
Packaged: 2018-03-26 03:36:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3835528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiekiel/pseuds/spiekiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Stiles almost dies is in Bogotá.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the blades rotate, there's just no landing pad

1.

 

The first time Stiles almost dies is in Bogotá.  

 

No, scratch that.The time Stiles comes _closest_ to death is in Bogotá.He’s almost died before - a gunshot wound or four, stabs and gashes, car crashes, concussions, some unplanned cliff jumps, unscheduled landings, poison snakes, adventures in waterboarding.Plus, they’re so far out of the city center it might not even be Bogotá anymore, technically, deep in the slums where houses are more just boards propped against each other and roads are winding muddy affairs, everything is very colorful and very dirty.

 

Stiles is staring up at a crooked turquoise brick wall, bleeding out through a double tap in his abdomen, his leg broken just under his shin, one eye swollen shut and his nose throbbing, glasses long gone.He’s tucked just in the entrance of an alleyway, which is about four feet across, weapons stripped down to a ka-bar, which he’s holding out in front of him like it’ll actually do any good if anyone but one of his squad members comes around the corner, contents of his backpack upended around him.  

 

His laptop is open, on its face and sunk an inch into the mud.He might cry.Manly tears.Tears of honorable mourning, in remembrance of a fallen brother in arms.

 

Gunshots crack out in the main street, closer than Stiles is strictly comfortable with in his current state of disreapair, and he’s preparing himself to see the faces of some very angry French paratroopers-turned-weapons-dealers come into his line of sight - which, how bad would _that_ be, killed by the _French_ of all people - when a well-worn cowboy hat shows up instead, bobbing and weaving admirably.

 

“Oh thank fuck,” Stiles says upon seeing it, but he can taste blood in his mouth and he’s pretty sure it comes out more like _ohmgmbfrgh._ Either way, appropriate reaction to the hat when he was expecting the barrel of a gun.

 

To be fair, that hat is sitting on top of Derek’s head, while Derek moves towards him down the short walk of the alleyway, the width of his shoulders blocking out the light and the noise from the firefight still going on.He has, unlike Stiles, managed to hold onto his gun, but he’s somehow lost his kevlar since Stiles last saw him, in the pandemonium of an ambush three miles away in the middle of a crowded bazaar.  

 

He has no idea how Derek got here, found Stiles in his own little separated few blocks of chaos, because he hasn’t seen any of the rest of the squad in _hours_ , but - 

 

He crouches in front of Stiles, rifle resting across his knees and pointing towards the mouth of the alley, positioned so he could shoot in a moment if he needed to.Stiles’ vision is blurring worse around the edges, and Derek’s face is mostly lost in the shadow from the brim of his hat, but he can still make out the tight downturn of Derek’s mouth at the corners, creases visible even through the blood smeared across his chin.

 

Derek’s fingers are hot on Stiles’ jaw, grounding even through slick sweat and dust grime.“ _Vale?”_ he asks.

 

“No,” Stiles gurgles.“Not okay, thanks.Just dying over here, slowly. _Very_ slowly.”

 

Derek makes a distressed chuffing noise under his breath, and tries to wipe some of the blood off of Stiles’ lips, but he probably just smears it sideways onto his cheek.He swings his rifle around onto his back, gets his arms around Stiles’ middle, and, because there’s no time for caution with gunshots getting louder and louder in the road, hefts Stiles’ weight up onto his shoulder, one hand steadying his back and the other behind his knees.

 

“I’m gonna bleed all over you,” Stiles says.Derek grunts.“I mean it, I’m really bleeding a lot.Also, I take back my earlier statement about dying very slowly, because we’re all dying very slowly, and I feel like it takes away from the severity of my situation to lump me in with the rest of humanity right now - “

 

Derek grumbles, “Stilinski.”  

 

Stiles accepts the handgun Derek hands him, and points it at the mouth of the alley as Derek starts hauling both their asses as fast as he can down the narrow, serpentine turquoise brick river, and - okay, Stiles is delirious.

 

2.

 

Salzburg changes things.

 

They’ve been officially dead for eight months now, on the run for the past nine weeks since that whole mess at the port of Los Angeles.Lydia likes to turn it around like they’re the ones hunting Kate, but it’s times like this - Stiles and Derek holed up in a not-so-secret Russian safehouse while Boyd and Isaac run around the city making lot of distracting noise - that remind Stiles that they’re never safe unless they’re moving.

 

He isn’t moving now.Derek’s face is pillowed in the crease between his thigh and hip, his unconscious body stretched out across the too-small bed and his hat on the pillows behind them, breathing deep and steady into Stiles’ jeans.There are suspicious rusty stains on the rug, and Stiles has the mother of all cricks in his neck from sitting criss-cross applesauce for the past four hours, from not sleeping for the past twenty-seven, but - 

 

Derek has never let Stiles wake up alone, and fuck if Stiles isn’t going to return the favor.  

 

The sniper’s fingers are loose and limp when Stiles turns them over in his hand, his eyelashes are dark smudges across his cheekbones in the white-blue predawn light filtering in through the blinds, and the only noise is from Stiles’ keyboard, because even under the influence of enough muscular paralytic to stop a tank Derek breathes silently, like some sort of predator.A cougar, or something.

 

There’s a small medical case laying open on the kitchen table across the room, a mean looking syringe of high-powered adrenaline sitting on top of a myriad other first-aid supplies, needle nose pliers and a spool of yarn and a bottle of unmarked medication that only Isaac can identify.In addition to the Glock in Stiles’ waistband and the rifle lying at Derek’s feet because he gets antsy if it gets too far away, there’s a small arsenal displayed in the open, broken-down refrigerator, courtesy of their unwitting Russian hosts.

 

Derek huffs out a puff of air and shifts on the bed next to him, and Stiles’ fingers react of their own accord, dropping from his laptop to tangle in Derek’s thick black hair, fingertips scraping over his scalp.  

 

The jerry-rigged walkie-talkie hooked up to Stiles’ laptop for distance erupts in a burst of static, and Lydia’s voice comes over the frankly _awful_ connection, honestly, Stiles usually prides himself on the quality of their comms - 

 

“Hey, boys.I’ve commandeered us a seaplane, fourteen miles upstream on the west bank of the Salzach.One hour, be there or be square.That’s an order.”

 

Stiles sighs, and looks down at Derek sleeping peacefully, blissfully unaware of the chaos Kate’s people are currently causing all around them trying to pin down Boyd and Isaac, of the mad dash they’re going to have to make to get to their XO and their getaway plane without getting their brains blown out.

 

He slips out from under Derek and stands, ignoring - with the greatest difficulty of his life - the way Derek’s fingers snag in his belt loop limply for a second before he turns back into the comforter.His laptop goes haphazardly into the one bag they managed to hang on to, and he takes the syringe from the table, eyeing it sideways, because Derek hates needles.Derek has never said that he hates needles, but Stiles can tell.

 

Standing beside the bed, Stiles takes another long minute to appreciate the calm before the storm.And to appreciate Derek’s bedhead before the hat goes back on, especially.

 

Then he grabs Derek’s bicep, rolls him onto his back, makes sure his airway is open, and sticks him in the heart.

 

Derek jerks up off the bed into a sitting position, eyes wide open, struggling for breath, and - geez, Stiles always thought that was just Hollywood playing things up, not the way adrenaline shots went in real life.

 

“Alright, big guy, you’re okay,” Stiles has his hands on Derek’s shoulders, forearms braced against his heaving chest to try to pin him back down to the bed, but he’s got a lot of muscle on him, and, “you’re good, you’re alright, it’s all good here, just you and me, I’ve got you - “

 

“Stiles,” Derek gasps.His hands are white-knuckled fists in the front of Stiles’ tee shirt.“Stiles, Stiles, Stiles - “

 

He can’t seem to find any more words, but he lets Stiles shush him and ease him back onto the bed, even if he pulls him most of the way with him, still frantic and tense and probably in shock, judging by the way his gorgeous multicolored eyes are blown wide - 

 

Stiles goes a little off balance from the weight of a sniper hanging from his front, and before he can really register what’s happening Derek’s got him by one ear.He starts to say, “You’re good - “ again, but Derek cuts him off with another, “ _Stiles_ ,” and - 

 

Derek’s lips are clumsy, still suffering from the after-effects of the paralytic, but Stiles sinks into it like it’s muscle memory, because Derek is _warm,_ and still groggy, and Stiles’ best friend in the whole goddamn world, and he’s pulling Stiles into his lap, kissing like he still can’t breathe, and - Stiles is a weak, weak-willed man.

 

3.

 

Stiles _hates_ Phnom Penh.

 

Well, to be fair, what he really hates isn’t the city itself, it’s one particular incident, it’s the haunted, hollow look in Derek’s eyes when Boyd skids their Hertz rental minivan around the corner and they see the warehouse across an open field of mud-dust-sand, burning like a wall-wave of fire.  

 

And - Derek has never _told_ Stiles why he doesn’t really talk, that would kind of defeat the purpose - but he gets nervous around Isaac’s vast array of lighters, he had to bring Stiles with him to church to light a candle for his _abuéla_ after she died, and it doesn’t take a genius to line up Derek’s (hacked) service record with that one army base outside Jalalabad that a bunch of tangos blew up the year of his first tour.So, this is bad.

 

“ _Mierda,_ ” Derek mutters under his breath, next to him in the third row.

 

Stiles looks over at him, illuminated by dancing flames that are still far-off even as their van struggles across the empty expanse - Derek looks like he did after Bolivia, like he did those first few months with the unit, like he’s looking at something way off, thousands of miles in the distance, and it took more than Stiles last time to bring him back, it took blood and venegeance and they have neither of those, here.

 

No one else seems to notice any change.In the front seat, Lydia is yelling, “Response time for emergency services in this city is twenty to thirty minutes, and I doubt they’ve even noticed yet - “

 

“That fire’s been going for at least eight minutes already,” Isaac adds from the second row, already pulling open the side door even as they continue to speed towards the warehouse.“If there’s anyone alive in there, we’re their only chance - “

 

Because there are definitely people in there, they know for a fact there are people in there, because forty-eight hours ago they were in London and Stiles tracked Kate’s latest shipment of trafficked humans to southeast Asia, to her headquarters in Cambodia and _here._

 

“Kate could still be in the vicinity,” Boyd says, voice rumbling calm.“Priority, boss?”

 

“Search and rescue,” Lydia commands, after only a moment’s hesitation.They’re under the wall of fire now, it’s going to be unload-the-van-load-the-guns-go any second, “Derek stands watch out here.”

 

Boyd slams on the brakes and everyone hauls ass out into the smoky air, Derek with a friendly kick in the seat of his pants from Stiles, because they’re Losers, they don’t coddle.  

 

Stiles looks up at the burning warehouse in awe, because he’s never seen a fire this big, and he’s contributed to the bombing of a number of pirate vessels in his day, as well as one North Korean prison, but the blood pumping through his veins feels like liquid flames, fused with adrenaline.Next to him, Derek’s gaze is fixed on his feet, eyes hooded by the brim of his hat.

 

“Okay, fuckwads,” Lydia slings a gun as big around as her leg over one shoulder, “Stiles and Boyd take the front, Isaac go right and check for emergency exits, I’ll go left.Send survivors to Derek. _Hooah!”_

 

 _Hooah_ , they shout back, all of them, because that’s just - who they are.

 

Derek catches Stiles by the arm even as Boyd is barreling his way through a plank of burning wood, Lydia and Isaac disappearing around opposite corners of the building.“ _Ten cuidado,_ ” he says, voice tight and earnest. _“Por favor.Regresa.”_

 

“I’m always careful, Der,” Stiles says.“You know me.”

 

Derek looks pained, like he always does when he thinks Stiles is being an idiot, but Stiles doesn’t see it because he’s already ducking under a burning doorway, one that collapses just about the second he’s through it, running out into the interior of the inferno because - fuck it, this place is coming down any second anyways.

 

4.

 

By the time they get to Yaoundé, Derek hasn’t talked to him for almost a month.

 

It’s more than his usual quiet, and more than the angry cold shoulder, because even after that incident with the tamales and that dangerous Japanese girl Kira and more rapidfire Spanish than Stiles’ highschool education could get him through, it had only been a few days of complete radio silence - so, he knows that Derek is really mad.Like, move a mountain by sheer rage, drain the oceans with the force of a single roar - _mad_.  

 

At this point, Stiles has tried everything, tried apologizing for _whatever the hell he did_ with food, with nicer accomodations than he usually books for them, with a significant reduction in his levels of snark and brilliance, with that one baby goat, that one time, before Lydia found out and made him get rid of it.He feels kind of like he’s suffocating, which is melodramatic and he hates it but his best friend won’t _smile_ at him - 

 

“Just fucking - “ he finally snaps in the middle of a bazaar while they’re out buying vegetables.

 

Derek looks up from the butternut squash with a single eyebrow raised.A little ways ahead of them in the stalls, Boyd gives Stiles a glance to check that yep, shit’s about to go down, before he moves off towards the fruit vendors to give them some space.

 

Stiles takes a strained breath.“Just _tell me what I did_ already, so I can fix it,” he orders.“Just - fuck, please.”

 

Derek puts down the squash and takes a step closer to him.“Stilinski,” he says, warningly.

 

Stiles feels like he might fucking cry, which is the most goddamn pathetic thing he’s ever heard in his life, but he feels pretty pathetic right now, in the bright Cameroon sun, skin already starting to peel even though it only burned this morning, hasn’t been home in three years but really hasn’t been home in a month.“You’re a real ass, you know, Derek,” he says, because it feels like what he wants to say.

 

The squash vendor is giving them weird looks over her knitting, but not many people in this country speak good English, especially not the kid yelling, “Good evil spirit necklace here, protect America!” at the corner.

 

Derek sighs, and runs a hand over his forehead under the hat.Without looking up, he says, “I am just worried.About the plan.”  

 

And - that makes sense.Derek’s shirt has had the telltale creases of a concealed shoulder holster for weeks now, and he’s been carrying two phones, an extra radio, even though Stiles usually has to sweet talk him into even using his comm.He’s nervous, and after the way their last big plan went in LA, he has every right to be.  

 

“You can’t just quit talking to me like that,” Stiles says.After a minute of watching Derek watch a butternut squash in deep contemplation, he adds, “The plan will work.”

 

Derek smiles sourly, forced just like it has been, and Stiles wants to _shake_ him, but touching Derek usually results in bodily harm, so he refrains.“The plan will work,” Derek says.

 

“ _Wow_ ,” Stiles interjects, “look at this, everyone, _Derek Hale_ agrees with me, wonder of wonders - “

 

“I am not sure it will not get all of us killed, though.”Derek’s eyes are locked on his, multicolored even in the shade of the hat, and whenever the sniper makes direct eye contact Stiles feels like he’s being sighted through a scope, like Derek’s lining up Stiles’ soul in his crosshairs and he’s ready to take the shot, but Stiles knows he won’t.

 

“Yeah, well,” Stiles says, awkwardly, as the squash vendor’s knitting project begins to reach truly gargantuan proportions.Seriously, who’s she knitting that sweater for, her giant basketball player grandson? “We always kind of knew we were going to die, didn’t we? And if we can die together, as a team, taking down Kate, I don’t think that’s so bad.It’s a pretty good way to go, even.”

 

Derek grimaces.“I do not want - _us_ to die,” he says.“ _Yo no quiero que mueras_.”

 

Stiles swallows around a lump in his throat, and - this is enough goddamn emotion for one day, they’re soldiers, not Mexican soap opera actresses or French poets.“We all have to die eventually,” he says, which is unusually macabre, for him, “so you better pick a great fucking vegetable for dinner.”

 

5.

 

Stiles never thought he would get here.

 

Derek looks good in Beacon Hills, New Hampshire.It’s kind of a ridiculous thought, Derek in suburban New England, but at the same time not - because this is Stiles’ home, where he grew up, where his dad is the Sheriff and Scott lives with Stiles’ godkids and the shabby little house Stiles bought in that one year when he wasn’t sure what to do with his life is still filled with moving boxes - and some of those boxes are Derek’s, now.

 

It’s not a particularly interesting time of day.They had breakfast a couple hours or so ago, and they’ll probably have lunch before too long, because the luxury of cooking in an actual kitchen, not just hot plates and jerry-rigged coffee makers, is still fresh and thrilling, and the Sheriff brought them some fish he caught the other day.It’s not a particularly interesting scene - Derek is laid out on the bank of the lake in swim trunks, curled around his sniper rifle, shooting holes in the buoy of their terrible neighbor Adrian Harris.

 

Stiles kicks his sneakers off at the edge of the sand, and walks carefully across the large-fragment pebbles and shells until his toes are in the gentle lapping water.He plops down.“I think the buoy is dead,” he says.

 

Derek grins around his scope, dangerous under the hat.“Good target practice.”

 

Stiles leans out on his elbow and tucks his face under Derek’s hat into his neck, nibbling gently at the skin below his ear, because he has always had a fixation on Derek’s throat (not to mention every other part of his body), and there’s finally no fucking mortal danger in the way to make him stop.“Need a break?” he murmurs.

 

“No,” Derek says, but he turns into him, fingers going to put the safety on the rifle automatically, and catches Stiles’ mouth.His lips are warm in the cool lake air, his skin is saturated and smooth when Stiles runs his hands over it, and it must have been long enough by now that there are no left over cuts and bruises, only scar tissue.

 

Derek doesn’t even have to look where he’s going as he backs into the house, rifle left on the porch and Stiles’ legs wrapped around his waist, bare feet quiet on the creaky wooden floors.Their bedroom is on the first floor, because Stiles’ first night here alone he couldn’t sleep, paranoid with no one sitting up on watch, and this way they can hear the outside world - their lips don’t break the whole way down the hallway, the brim of the hat folded up against Stiles’ forehead, until the backs of Derek’s knees hit the foot of their bed, and they tumble down.

 

There’s no noise in the house except the quiet creaking of the bed underneath them and a gentle breeze through the open porch door.Stiles pushes himself up on his arms to smile down at Derek, and he tries to make it look sexy but it probably looks kind of goofy.Derek is looking at him fondly anyways, a crinkled grin at the corners of his eyes, hat tipped back.“ _Cojeme,”_ he murmurs, “ _Serás la muerte de mí_ , Stiles.”

 

Stiles drops down to kiss him again, open-mouthed and slow, his body rolling flush against Derek’s, and _fuck,_ he’s aching, and those swim trunks aren’t doing much to hide the state Derek’s in, either.Derek’s big hands are on the side of his face, and the dip of his lower back under his flannel shirt, rough calluses familiar on Stiles’ skin, but the soft sounds he’s making against his mouth still send electric currents down his spine.

 

Derek rolls his hips up like he can’t help it, so hard Stiles is lifted up and _keens_.When he recovers, tongue hanging loosely onto Derek’s lower lip, he pants, “Lube _,_ Der - “

 

Derek reaches up with one hand to set his hat aside on the pillows, then reaches over to their bedside table to grab the tube they never bothered to put back in the drawer.Stiles is wiggling out of his pants on top of him, out of his boxers, and when Derek sits up in a _fucking hot_ show of abdominal stregth to wrap a hand around the back of Stiles’ skull and kiss him, the tease of his swim trunks against Stiles’ bare skin is insanity.

 

Slick fingers press against his entrance, Derek’s chest heaving against him, the front of his flannel shirt brushing lightly over his cock while his hips seek friction against Derek’s abdomen, and Derek swears, wrecked, “ _Me encanta tu culo_.Fuck, so gorgeous, Stiles - “

 

Two fingers straight away, and Stiles stops breathing, lungs stuck against the cage of his ribs.“Derek,” he moans.Derek’s lips are moving across his collarbone, one button tugged undone at his collar, fingers pumping and spreading in an easy rhythm and moving Stiles’ hips with them, and Stiles is making noises he’s not fully conscious of, like the house settling, like them settling into it.  

 

Stiles knots his fingers in Derek’s thick hair and pulls his head back with it, knocking their mouths back together.“Okay, good,” he garbles into Derek’s lips, his tongue, because he’s going to come before he even gets Derek’s fantastic fucking cock in him - 

 

The pressure of Derek’s fingers disappears, and then it’s a few frantic seconds of rushing to get Derek’s swim trunks off him, of fisting lube down Derek’s length before Stiles pushes him down against the bed, straddles him and sinks down slow, Derek’s hands white-knuckled in the hem of his shirt.  

 

And this is - it feels like they’ve been fighting as long as they’ve been alive, and this is victory, or retirement, they’ve been forged in blood and gunfire and sweat and tears and sleepless nights in the cargo holds of planes and schoolbuses flying through jungles and odd jobs in questionable locales - and Stiles only wants this, Derek, maybe a dog if he can convince Derek that cats are _not to be trusted -_

 

Derek’s hips buck, his cock sinking deep, and Stiles starts moving.  

 

It doesn’t take long, Derek’s head thrown back and his eyes only half-open, Stiles can’t resist leaning forward to suck a bruise into his neck, riding up and down over the hot, tense expanse of Derek’s bare body, his muscles rippling under golden skin, he feels Derek’s teeth on his earlobe and his hips falter, stutter, and he’s coming - 

 

Derek fucks him through it, heels dug into the bedspread to get the leverage, and a few breaths in the quiet house later he’s following Stiles over the edge, biting the swell of Stiles’ shoulder through his shirt.  

 

Stiles falls limp on the bed next to him, careful not to land on the hat.Derek pulls him into his shoulder, nuzzling into the side of his face.“ _Bueno?”_ asks, his voice little more than a puff of air against Stiles’ ear.

 

Face pressed against his skin, Stiles smiles.“Muy bueno,” his accent is terrible, but Derek doesn’t really seem like he cares.

 


End file.
